- Member of Parliament
- Member of the Subcommittee on Review of Parliament’s involvement with associations and recognized Interparliamentary groups
Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
- Conservative
- Lambton—Kent—Middlesex
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $149,801.69
- Government Page
- May/19/22 4:21:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as far as I can see with the provinces, the experts at the provincial level have said that we do not need to have a mask mandate any longer and that it is a personal choice. If the member wants to wear a mask, I am totally fine with that, but I think it needs to go both ways. We need to have respect for each other, continue to follow advice we hear from public health officials who say we do not need to have these mandates any longer.
What we really do have a problem with in this place is a real Liberal leadership crisis problem. That is the biggest problem right now. They are not showing leadership on this. They need to do the right thing and drop all the mandates.
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- May/19/22 4:19:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that was a great question.
My office staff as well have been very frustrated since the beginning of this pandemic. My office has turned into a Service Canada office. We are happy to serve the people of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex. In fact, I am going to take the time right now to thank my staff who have worked tirelessly for constituents to help them with any of their needs while the Service Canada offices were closed. I send my thanks to Yvonne, Todd, Kim, David, Anna Marie and Jordan. I appreciate all the work that they have done to help my constituents.
In the future, I would hope that the government would hire more people, reopen its offices, drop the mandates, get people back to work in their offices so they can do the jobs that we are paying them to do as taxpayers in Canada and restore the services back to prepandemic levels so we can get on with our lives.
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- May/19/22 4:18:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we continue to follow the health advice of the provinces. The provinces have medical health officers, and they are in charge of health care in this country.
My question to the member opposite and to the government, actually, is this: What information do they have that they are not telling the provinces? Why do they still have mask mandates in federal buildings when the provinces have removed restrictions everywhere across this country? I am sure Canadians would like to see that information to know if they are hiding something from Canadians and from our public health officers in the provinces.
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- May/19/22 4:08:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, just as with most problems in this country, Liberals are the cause. Over the past seven years, it feels like they have removed common sense from the dictionary.
They will try to deny it, and they will try to shift blame. They have blamed out-of-practice travellers for the delays, backlogs and travel-associated horror stories that we see coming out of Canadian airports right now, even for domestic flights. Certainly, their globally outdated mandates, red-tape-bundled policies and general lack of compassion is not at fault.
They are vindictive. They are smug, and their leadership is power hungry. The government is the root of the problem.
If I have not been clear enough already, the rest of the world is moving past the pandemic. Even Canada's provinces have learned to live with COVID, but our federal government has not. This is no longer about safety. It definitely is not about common sense. It is about control. Once the Liberals took control, they did not know what to do with their new-found power, and Canadians have suffered long enough for their half-witted initiatives. It is way past time for Canada to return to prepandemic rules and service levels for travel.
Lack of staff is not an excuse. They have had plenty of time to plan for reopening, just like they have had years to plan for passport renewals, another thing the Liberals have dropped the ball on hard.
I am hearing from many constituents about the delays they are experiencing at the passport office, how people wait for hours in line to get to the door just to be told to go home. They then phone, and the phones ring and ring, but they never get answered. I am also being told that Passport Canada is no longer accepting electronic documents and is telling people to go to their MP's office to print the documents. Where is the common sense in that?
It gets worse. It gets a lot worse, and I wonder who or what the government will blame next for the mistakes this time.
The provinces have dropped their mask mandates, yet federal buildings still require people to wear a mask regardless. People wait in those long lines at passport offices, sometimes for hours, get to the door and then they find out that they are required to wear a mask in order to get service.
When they get inside to find out they need a mask, the federal offices have none to give them and there are none to be found. What is a person supposed to do? People are sharing masks. Multiple people, strangers, are using the same mask because the government refused to have a plan.
I am no doctor, but I am pretty sure that wearing a used mask from someone else is far worse than not wearing a mask at all. It seems like the Liberals prefer to have conflicting, arbitrary rules that cause outrage and confuse people.
Do people want more proof of Liberal political theatrics? The drama teacher in charge is ready to act stern and frighten Canadians into compliance. Afterward, when the cameras are all turned off, he is happy to rip off his mask, smile, socialize and jet set around the world just as though restrictions no longer exist. There is one set of rules for the people in power, and one set of rules for the rest.
The rules are different for people like Julie from my riding. She did the responsible thing. She applied for her family's passports months in advance of their trip, but since then, Service Canada has delayed responding to her inquiries, sent her for new passport photos multiple times and told her that she needs to pay $95 per person just to speed up processing times.
The government is using backlogs caused by its own incompetence to extort Canadians who played by the rules. It is simply shameful and unbelievable, and again, there is no common sense. If members thought that passports was a wild ride, it gets far worse.
Let us take a look at what the Liberals have been doing to boaters. Southwestern Ontario is bordered by the Great Lakes, and my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex sits on the beautiful southern shores of Lake Huron. Other parts of my riding are along the St. Clair River and Lake St. Clair.
As boating season starts, boaters are wanting to go across the river to Michigan. Before the pandemic, the number of small vessel reporting sites was 400. That number has now been cut to 84. As boating season opens up, boaters will have to travel out of their way to report their vessel.
Do members not believe me? Constituents like John have written to me to say that, instead of taking their boat across an 800-metre wide river to get to and from my riding and Michigan, the CBSA wants them to reroute for 76 kilometres round trip just to check in. This is ridiculous.
John has calculated that it would cost him over $1,200 per trip just to meet this requirement. He has even calculated that this will create an extra 1,140 kilograms of carbon emissions just for one trip for him. The hypocrisy is that the government is pretending to care about the environment and Canadians but, in practice, it is needlessly adding emissions.
I just found out, minutes ago, that the government actually announced that it is going to reopen those reporting sites, but that is only after Conservatives pushed it for common sense and to lift these restrictions from the boaters.
Federal restrictions are being made and enforced without common sense. These mandates unfairly punish Canadians, and the government is giving no indication that it will ease off any time soon. It has consistently missed the mark on marine travel, from Walpole Algonac Ferry in my riding, which was shut down due to marine transportation not being included in cross-border travel exemptions earlier this year, to those recreational boaters who are not going to have points of access entry this spring. Canadians are being left behind. Continuing temporary closures for over two years is unnecessary, costly and irresponsible.
When I previously asked the minister if they will allow CBSA's regular points of entry to be reopened, he laughed. I will spell that out again: Liberal ministers are laughing at the pain they are causing Canadians. They are taking joy in the prospect of crippled tourism and empty rural small town shops during what would normally be a busy season and the busiest time of the year, which will hurt small businesses in communities such as Mitchell's Bay, Port Lambton, and Wallaceburg. This is not a joke.
The behaviour displayed by these ministers was despicable and very telling of how little a priority the concerns of my constituents are to the Liberal government.
Did members know that Canada is the only country in the world where non-vaccinated people are not allowed to travel domestically? Let that sink in. That is not okay. Requiring a type of passport for Canadians to travel domestically, creating second-class citizens, needs to end. The government is going out of its way to punish fully vaccinated travellers, no matter if they cross by land, sea or air.
I have had personal experience with this when waiting in line for security at airports, watching people struggle with delays and fighting the mandatory use of the barely functioning ArriveCAN app, something that the government insists on using.
Remember how I mentioned earlier how it would only take paper documents? Well, now it wants an app, something that is totally digital, which is another decision that spits in the face of common sense-loving Canadians.
Liberals refuse to compromise. They will not give people the choice to use paper or electronic documents. That would make too much sense.
At the land border crossings, what is happening late in the evening? Well, there is one overworked stall that is still open. Americans do not know about the ArriveCAN app when they are crossing and the requirement to use it. The government has failed to explain to them and to advertise to would-be border crossers of this requirement. This makes for frustration and delays for tourists coming to support our economy and for Canadians returning home.
For example, I spoke with a senior couple in my riding who are fed up with how little is being done to help them. They are in their 80s, and they are very cautious. They care about the rules, and they want to try to follow them. They asked their son for help to buy a phone, their very first smart phone, something that they were forced to buy, because they were excited to resume day trips across the border.
When they put the ArriveCAN app on, it was not working and they did not know what to do. They told me that they took time and drove down to the store to see if the young clerk could help them. Unfortunately, though, they all tried, and it still did not work. They returned their new phone, they shelved their excitement and returned home wondering why the government would make visiting loved ones for a day so hard for them.
I know that Conservatives are asking for the Liberal government to do something that is very difficult for them, which is to finally adopt some common sense and listen to Canadians instead of to themselves. People want their lives back and one way to start giving them this is to return to prepandemic rules and service levels for travel.
Everything the government touches is an absolute failure. On behalf of all Canadians disappointed with how their plans are being ruined, I will ask this: If Canadians do not have a smart phone, can they get a smart government, or at least one with common sense?
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- Mar/25/22 11:16:36 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, contrary to what the Minister of Health is saying, the federal government's insistence on the absolute necessity of vaccine mandates is not founded in science.
Some Canadians choose to remain unvaccinated and always will. That is simply a fact. It was not an easy choice for them, but because of real anxiety about COVID vaccines, they have sacrificed their jobs and their ability to travel to see loved ones.
Our Prime Minister shamefully labelled these Canadians as racists and misogynists. He refused to apologize or even show a hint of decency or dignity, and that has been noticed all around the world. Regardless of how the Prime Minister feels about someone's personal choices, it is time to accept them. It is time to treat people with dignity and respect.
The provinces are following the science, the mandates are lifting and we are all learning to live with COVID. On behalf of my constituents in Lambton—Kent—Middlesex and all Canadians, I call upon the government to have compassion and immediately drop these punitive mandates.
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- Feb/20/22 10:12:13 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member said in his speech that groups of people have been mobilizing and protesting across this country. They are protesting because the Liberal government's mandates have driven them to do this. The Prime Minister and the government have been calling people names and saying they are a fringe minority of Canadians, yet millions of Canadians have come out in support of their freedoms across the country. It is the Prime Minister's lack of leadership, divisive words, name-calling and unscientific mandates that started this in the first place. Canadians just wanted to be heard.
When will the member, the Prime Minister and the Liberals start taking responsibility for the division they have created in this country among Canadians?
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- Feb/10/22 2:38:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, traffic over the Blue Water Bridge, which is a direct link to my riding of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, is backed up because the Liberal government will not lift the mandates. Our Prime Minister's divisive words only add fuel to the fire and encourage the blockades. There are tractors parked on the 402 right now. The Prime Minister is doing nothing to stop the division he has created and give hope to our nation, which is beautiful but weary.
What is the Prime Minister doing today to end the mandates and restore Canada's supply chains?
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